And the Gold medal for cheating goes to…

Finally, they got them Chinese for ‘cheating’. On the fifth day of the London games on Wednesday, the International Olympic Committee chucked out eight badminton players from China, South Korea and Indonesia for “throwing their matches”. The action was taken, according to media reports, against the female doubles players as they “appeared to be trying to manipulate which team they would have to face in the quarter-finals”. Was it just a coincidence that all the players involved in this shameful incident were from Asia? Not really.

Now, imagine for a moment if the players involved in these matches were from England, Denmark, US or Canada – from the so-called First World. Would the IOC have dared to throw them out of London 2012 for “not using their best efforts to win a match” and “conducting oneself in a manner that is clearly abusive or detrimental to the sport”? Not really.

The way the Chinese are being targeted at London, it’s difficult not to smell a rat here. Frankly, I don’t care much about which team wins how many gold medals at these over-rated, over-hyped games where over-paid players compete for glory that makes no difference to the real life of real people. Nor I am a fan of China’s growing power in sports. But what’s happening in London is not sports but politics among nations.

At London, China has committed the cardinal sin of gate-crashing into the rich people’s (read white) club by doing extraordinarily well in swimming – a preserve of developed nations (read white). It’s a game where white boys and girls from rich nations compete against each other. The only exception to the rule was USSR. Though the Olympics are world games, there are certain disciplines like swimming, gymnastics, equestrian and to an extent even athletics where only athletes from the rich world compete against each other. And there are disciplines like boxing, wrestling, weightlifting where sportsmen from the developing world fight each other. In 2008, the Chinese did rather well in gymnastics. And in 2012, they have breached the final frontier – swimming.

No wonder, the rich nations have been shaken by the performance of Chinese swimmer like Sun Yang and Ye Shiwen, the teenager who has already won two golds. After she won the first gold, a well-known American coach John Leonard, who is the executive director of the World Swimming Coaches Association, called Ye’s performance as “disturbing”, , “suspicious”, “outrageous” and “unbelievable”. Soon, others joined the chorus. Though the IOC and the British Olympic Association came to Ye’s defence later, the American coach succeeded in igniting a row. The western media had a gala time splashing stories that cast doubts about Ye’s talent.

Imagine if Ye was a 16-year-old swimmer from America. Then the western media would be calling her a sensation, a prodigy or a phenomenon. But when a Chinese kid creates a new world record, especially after beating a white girl – Stephanie Rice, a triple Olympic gold medallist and London crowd’s favourite – she becomes a “cheat” and we are told by a nutcase that the Chinese are doing some hanky-panky stuff, and then the suspicion goes viral, with bizarre theories of gene-doping floating about without any evidence or proof. And instead of recognizing her talent, the teenager is declared guilty by suspicion. On Tuesday, Ye’s father told a Chinese news site that her stunning performance was down to hard work, adding: “The western media has always been arrogant, and suspicious of Chinese people.”

In the good old days, when USSR and East Germany used to dominate the Olympics the western coaches, administrators and media would do a whisper campaign against the Russians, alleging that they were good because they were all on steroids and drugs. Now, with China rising on the sports scene, the same charges are being repeated against the Chinese sportsperson. This despite the fact that top athletes from US and Canada have been caught, banned and even jailed for doping.

In the case of badminton players thrown out by the IOC, we will never know if the shuttlers deliberately did what they did. Even if they did throw their matches, this is not the first time a game has been thrown by players to make sure they don’t play against strong rivals in the next round. Football, cricket, hockey, tennis or badminton, this kind of behaviour is not exceptional. As Indian badminton coach P Gopichand said on TV that things like this happen all the time. I can’t recall a single incident when players have been barred from further play because the referee thought “they were not trying hard enough”.

If any cheating is happening at these games, it’s being done by the First World. With the disqualification of the Chinese, Korean and Indonesian teams, players from Russia, Canada, Australia and South Africa have qualified for the quarter-final spot. The Asians have been robbed in broad daylight.

In recent years, the West has become increasingly insecure and suspicious of Asia, thanks to their financial crisis. At the same time, from saving global capitalism from collapsing to making new records in swimming pool, China is beating the west at their own game. This is unbearable for the western nations whose economies are in tatters and societies on the point of rupture. They can’t beat the Chinese – and other Asians — but they certainly can cheat them of their moment by accusing them of cheating. They deserve a gold medal for being sore losers.

DISCLAIMER : Views expressed above are the author's own.

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Shobhan Saxena is a Sao Paulo-based journalist. An editor with Sunday Times of India before moving to Brazil, he now reports on politics, trade, culture, music and, of course, football. Though Shobhan's interests range from international issues, human rights and politics to art & culture, what really fascinates him is the extraordinary lives of ordinary people - the men and women on the street, their lives and their views on everything under the sun. Here, he tries to capture small slices of those colourful lives in Brazil and other South American countries.
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Shobhan Saxena is a Sao Paulo-based journalist. An editor with Sunday Times of India before moving to Brazil, he now reports on politics, trade, culture, mu. . .